Recovery Ride

We had a larger group than usual today because the TNT triathlon team showed up to do a recovery ride as well. In talking with the coach of the Tri team, I realized how big of a committment they have to make to train. Sounds like several times a week since they have to swim, run, and cycle! Amazing! Maybe some day! :o)

The ride was uneventful though, just our usual loop and a fun, fast train ride down Alpine!

Last Long Training Ride for the Season - 83 Miles

Only 2 weeks to go! The schedule slotted today as our last long ride before the event (Tour de Palm Springs) on February 13, 2010. We met in Cupertino at Monta Vista Park (normal meeting place for Mt. Eden hill climbs) and were ride ready by 6:45am! Driving to the park at around 6am was neat as it was a full moon...check out the view that I had driving northbound on 280. Umm, don't ask me how I got that picture! :)

As usual, I am one of the first ones there and I get myself and my bike ready to go. Coach Patrick arrives and has route sheets in hand. I grab one and notice that we are doing a hill climb right away over Mt. Eden! Great, I thought we were done with hill climbs! Oh well. The rest of the route sheet looked pretty straight forward as we were doing a tour of the bay area peninsula. Cool, we should have pretty good weather (yeah right)!

Off we go at around 7:15 am (don't you hate it when they say "ride ready" by 6:45am but some people don't arrive until that time). Don't get me started! Anyway, we are ready to go and Coach Patrick comes up to me and says that he really wants me to focus on finishing strong today. We did 80 miles a couple of weeks prior to today so he wanted us to remember how we road that day and think of what we could do to pace ourselves better so that we finish a lot stronger today! I definitely kept that in mind today!

First up, Mt. Eden. I was soooo tempted to attack that hill. I mean it's been almost a month since we've done hill climbs and I know I am a much stronger rider today than I was just a few weeks ago. But of course, this is only 3 miles into an 83 mile ride so I had to pace myself so that it wouldn't hurt later. I hooked up with my favorite climbing buddy Henry and we went up together at a pretty easy pace, no standing, and we actually did a lot of talking while going up. Ok, I guess I am getting better as it actually seemed "easier" (notice I never said easy) to get up that hill. We road some familiar roads around Los Gatos/Saratoga area before our first stop at mile 21 back at Monta Vista Park. It's nice having the first stop be where our cars are parked since we were able to shed some layers as the weather is now looking very nice. Oh I forgot, about 1 mile before the 1st rest stop, Henry got the first flat of the day (rear wheel too)! But man, he knows what he's doing as he swapped that tube fast! And, we had our SAG captain, Ruth come up right on time with the floor pump! We are so spoiled with our ride support team!

After refueling and a potty break, we headed back out and started towards Palo Alto. Again, very familiar roads as we hit Foothill to Alpine to Portola to Mountain Home. This stretch caused one of our other teammates to flat as well! Man, not a good sign, 2 flats in less than 40 miles. Oh well, nothing we could do but help her change it. Here comes SAG captain Ruth again to the rescue with her pump!! :) This route, especially the long (not steep, but gradual ascent) up Alpine reminded me of our Sorting ride (only 2nd ride of the season) way back in November and how this little incline just about had me gassed! I wanted to quit. But today, it was quite nice going up that little road. It definitely boosted my confidence! Ok, we got to rest stop #2 at about mile 42 and tried to make it quick so that we could make up some time. We went to the bathrooms, refueled and off we went.

Next part of the ride would take us further north on the peninsula to Canada, Skyline, Crystal Springs. Canada was where we did our Pacelining Clinic at the beginning of the year, so we did a lot of short pulls to allow everyone on our 7 person team take the lead. I know I am biased and all, but man, we look good! :) We work so well together as a team. Our wheels are pretty close together and we communicate really well. That makes us so efficient and saves a lot of energy! Bummer! "FLAT"!!! We had to yell that out again as another teammate, Eddie, got the third flat of the day! His took a little longer to change since for some reason it appeared he had two bad tubes. I did get a couple of photos of my teammates. And of course, there's Ruth, our SAG Captain, helping out!

Ok, we were in the Burlingame/San Mateo/Hillsborough area. There are some nice houses in these neck of the woods! We found ourselves oohing and aaahing over many of the beautiful homes. As we started heading back south on the peninsula, we came to a trail called Ralston Bike Trail that lead us back over 280...and I mean literally over 280! We went over one of those walking bridges to the other side back to Canada. Oh, I forgot to mention...it wouldn't be a true Winter Cycling Team ride if it didn't rain! Yup, it started coming down on us. Albeit, nothing too bad and not too long. But still, I know we need the rain and all, but this was getting old.

Final rest stop was back in Los Altos at mile 68. Ok, all I kept thinking was how I felt last week on the Buddy ride and that was only 66 miles total. I am at mile 68 and I feel great! Got some more fuel and then 5 of the 7 of us went on. One of our other teammates was "bonking". He was not feeling well so one of our mentors, Arielle, told us to go ahead and she would bring our other teammate in at a slower pace. Ok, that only left 5 of us to work together to bring home the last 16 miles.

We headed down Woodside to Whiskey Hill to Sand Hill to Santa Cruz to Junipero Serra to Foothill and back to Monta Vista Park. The best part was I felt great. We got there and saw the fastest group packing up. They were gassed! They said they kept too fast of a pace and felt drained. So, I, I mean "we" kept a good enough pace where we felt really good. I even suggested that since it was only another 3 miles away, why don't we go for another hill climb on Mt. Eden? My teammates wanted to kill me!! LOL!!! :)

That's it...after this ride, the coaches said that we are ready to take on 100 miles at Palm Springs! We have one more training ride next Saturday but it's only 30 miles and a little potluck lunch celebration afterwards. Check me out saying "only" 30 miles! Who would have ever thought that!

Last Spin Class! What a Bummer!!!!

Tonight was it. The last spin class of this season! I can't believe that we did it! Coach Peggy brought cookies for the occasion, but she didn't let up tonight! She kept her promise of making the classes tough and that she lives up to her name, "SPINZILLA"!

Seriously, if it weren't for Coach Peggy and her Spin classes, I would definitely be in a lot of trouble! Since she knew all the routes that we were doing (she was a TNT Coach for many years), she knew how to prepare us for each ride! And that she did!

At the beginning of the class I was curious where she normally taught Spin classes and she said that she didn't anymore. She had in fact retired from teaching Spin classes. But it was Head Coach Patrick who convinced her to come back. What's even more amazing is that not only did Coach Peggy donate her valuable time each week, she donated lots and lots of money towards The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Each week, she would keep the classes fun by asking participants to guess artists and titles of songs that she played during our classes. She would throw around $10 - $25 here and there to those who guessed correctly. But that's nothing...as I've told you in the past, she has also challenged each person to come to each and everyone of her classes...if you did, $100 towards your fundraising! There were 4 of us who got the $100 each! Now, couple that with her time to get us in shape, and I'll tell you, that is one generous and extraordinary lady!

I will definitely miss going to Spin classes on Thursday evenings! I will definitely keep riding the Spin bike in my own gym, but I know it won't be the same without Coach Peggy leading us! Cheers to you Coach Peggy, and yes, I will definitely be riding for your cat Tripod (Coach Peggy's 3 legged cat who has Leukemia)!

Finally...A Ride With No Rain!!!

Another recovery ride scheduled to start at 9am. I got to the meeting place in Los Altos at 8am because I knew that I had to at least clean and lube my chain from yesterday's wet ride. I got it all clean, checked and pumped air in my tires, got all my gear on and was ready to go! Wait a minute, no one is here! Don't tell me everyone flaked today. I know a lot of people don't want to ride in the rain! Well, today was a day of riding with no rain! A little cold, but at least we stayed dry....all 3 of us!

Coach Don showed up at around 8:45am. Then, another participant, Bobby, showed up about 10 minutes later. They got their gear on, set up their bikes and we were off by around 9:15. If you know me, I hate starting out late! If you're not early, you're late is my motto! Oh well, it was just a recovery ride anyway. The nice thing about only being 3 of us on the ride is that we were able to get going at a pretty good pace and not have to wait for too many people to catch up.

In fact, we finished the ride before 11am. Most times we don't finish before 11:30 and that's even when we start on time at 9am. Time to eat and time to go wash the bike! Can't wait until next weekend! It will be our last long ride before the actual event! 80 miles next week and it's titled Tour de Peninsula!

Ride Around the Bottom of the Bay - A Day of Flats!

The ride for today was titled, "66 Miles Around the Bottom of the Bay". Today was considered a "buddy ride" which means that it's not an official TNT ride, which means it's unsupported (ie: food on our own and no ride support). It also meant that you ride at your own pace and you ride with whomever you want to.

I don't know why, but when I went to sleep last night, I wasn't as nervous as I was the prior week. In fact, I caught myself saying, "hmmm...I don't need to get up too early tomorrow morning, it's only a 66 mile ride tomorrow"! DOH!! Would I regret thinking that way later!

We started in Los Altos and our route was to take us about 15 miles to the Dumbarton bridge. The past week was filled with rainy days so we were lucky that it wasn't raining...yet! We started the ride and wouldn't you know it that it started raining on mile 2! We were getting soaked! Our first stop was a restroom stop at mile 14 right before we were to go over the Dumbarton bridge. Luckily it stopped raining and we didn't see anymore rain for the day. In fact, we got some sun for part of our ride.

Going over the bridge was a trip! I've lived in the bay area all my life and I think I've been over the Dumbarton bridge once in my life and of course it was in a car. I never knew there was a bike lane on the bridge. This is where one of our teammates got his first of 3 flats. I didn't know he got a flat until I was already off the bridge on the eastern side. We had to ride in single file and it was hard to hear anything since all the cars were passing by. That teammate decided to call it a day at around mile 23 when he got his 3rd flat! It wasn't until later that I found out that another teammate had brought a friend to ride with us and that friend actually got 2 flats before getting to the bridge so she called it a day as well.

One of my teammates, Annette and I were ahead of the pack when we made it over the bridge. Since our other teammate who got the flat was with one of the coaches, Annette and I decided to keep go ahead since it was getting cold and were still wet from the rain. We got to Patterson Ranch in Fremont. We had no clue where we should be going next so we rode around a bit and tried to wait for the rest of the team. We definitely thought we went the wrong way so we decided to go back towards the road we came in on. Once we saw other teammates, one of the mentors asked us if we did the loop already? We were like, "what loop." She said, follow me so we did.

I guess we were going in the right direction and just needed to do the "loop". The loop was around a large hill in the park that we would have definitely thought we were lost if we kept going. What we didn't realize was that it was a big loop that would get us back on the same road that we came in on. Oh well, whats a few extra miles! The only bad thing is that we lost a lot of time waiting so we were in for a looooong day!

Ok, after regrouping with the rest of the team, we headed out with 4 of us in a small group. The other three included my one teammate, Annette, and then two TNT Mentors, Arielle and Butch. What all three of these guys had in common is that they are all fast! I had my work cut out for me! In fact, by mile 40, I was done! My legs just couldn't go anymore! I was so tired. I slowed it down and let the three of them go ahead of me. I tried to keep a constant cadence and not push too hard. I came to a corner where I saw the other three waiting for me. I told them that they didn't have to wait but they were very cool and said, "Hey, we are a team!" I think what really got me was when Annette said, "C'mon Harold, what are you a B#$%$? Suck it up!" Wow, not what I would expect from a lady! :o) Nevertheless, that got me motivated to step it up and dig deep in the fuel tank! I took in a GU pack and went from "sad to glad"!!!

At around mile 47 (we were in Milpitas by this time) , Arielle (one of our mentors) got a flat! Whew, I don't mind the rest even though I didn't tell them that. :o) She changed it pretty fast though so off we went again. At about mile 50, Arielle got another flat. Ok, now I didn't wish for this rest! She didn't have another tube but she still had her last one and a patch kit. But to save time, I gave her my spare tube. Ok, changed it out again and then this time, we decided to try and use her CO2 cartridge to fill the tire (don't ever use one of these). Well, it didn't help that none of us have ever used one of these? I mean what the worse that could happen? The cartridge filled her tire in about 3 seconds! It was instant! So Arielle puts the tire on and instantly the tire went flat again!! She had to take the tire off the bike again. Something is wrong! We tried pumping air into the tire with a regular pump but it wasn't holding air. Could I have given her a bad tube? Was it the CO2 cartridge?

Since we were down to one last tube between all four of us, Mentor Butch decided to take the wheel off the tire and inspect the wheel and tire carefully. Both Butch and I were also supposed to be somewhere by 3pm and we knew that wasn't going to happen so we had to make phone calls to our wives. While I had the phone out, I took a picture of my 3 teammates on the side of the road. Say hi to Annette, Butch and Arielle (standing). How many TNT people does it take to change a tube? LOL!! All we could do was laugh...what a long day!

The last 16 or so miles was tough. It was getting cold, lots of traffic, and the headwind was picking up. Mentor Butch led us back to Los Altos and we drafted behind him the rest of the way! What a lifesaver! What was supposed to be a 66 mile ride ended up being a 70 mile ride for Annette and I. Total ride time was only 4 hours 41 minutes, but total time from start to finish was 7 hours exactly! A lot of time definitely wasted, but still a great workout and I got to see the bottom of the bay!

One thing is for sure. I have met a lot of people who have ridden for a long time and never ride in the rain. I have been riding my bike for only about 3 months and I can say that I have a lot of experience riding in the rain! That also means that I have a lot of cleaning to do on the bike!

Spin Class - Anaerobic Workout!

We usually warm up for few minutes, but coach Peggy said to go ahead and spin and warm up our legs for about 10 minutes. Ok, why is she being so easy on us? Something is up! Yup, she said that tonight's workout would be an anaerobic one! What does that mean? It means, "without oxygen"! Enough said! I am still trying to catch my breath! Last spin class next week! Yippeee!!!!!

Sunday Recovery Ride

Ok, this was a game time decision as to whether (or weather) or not I was going to the recovery ride in Los Altos. When I woke up it was not raining so I went on-line and checked weather.com (yeah I know, how naive of me to believe weather.com). Anyway, forecast was for rain to start at around 1pm. We should be able to get our 22 mile recovery ride in and be done by around 11am. So off I went!

I got to Los Altos and only Coach Don was there. Ok, did everyone else bail? Here comes a few more people. But that's it, there were only 5 of us total and I was the only participant to show up. Oh well, it was a bit cool, but at least it was dry...for now!

We go north on Foothill and then make a left onto Page Mill Road, then an immediate slight right onto Old Page Mill to try and avoid some traffic. Back onto Page Mill, under hwy 280, and then a right onto Arastradero to the Arastradero Preserve. Here, three of us, Mentor Butch, Mentor Geoff, and I waited for the other two to arrive. Coach Don was taking it easy this morning as he had a long day yesterday in Santa Cruz. Coach Don's group was out on a very long ride yesterday (approximately 10 hours). After they arrived and after a quick water break we headed back via Alpine Road. We usually smoke down this fun hill. But today, wouldn't you know it, it started to pour on us! Yup, another ride where we got soaked! So much for the rain staying away until 1pm!

We made it back a little after 11:15am and tried to dry off as best as we could. It would have been easier to just stay in bed this morning, but then again, what fun would that have been! :) Rain, rain, go away!!!!!